Kyle Shanahan’s smokescreen with Jimmy Garoppolo lacks substance

The San Francisco 49ers head coach says he’s willing to keep Jimmy Garoppolo on the roster, but no one should be inclined to believe it.

Only days away from the National Football League’s deadline to pare down active rosters to 53 players who will enter the regular season for each team, Kyle Shanahan swears he doesn’t know what he’s doing when it comes to Jimmy Garoppolo.

If you’re laughing, it’s understandable.

Can you imagine anyone else in a key leadership position tasked with the management and utilization of assets worth tens of millions of dollars shrugging shoulders at what the future will look like for items or persons placed in their care? The correct answer is no, and Shanahan isn’t stupid. The Niners have known for a very long time what they were going to do with Garoppolo and issuing ridiculous statements to reporters isn’t going to fool anyone—or at least it shouldn’t.

At this point, Garoppolo isn’t practicing with the San Francisco 49ers in the preseason and he certainly isn’t playing any games. At this point, he’s taking up space on the offseason roster for the sole reason of eking any sort of trade value out of him. Pretty soon, when active rosters are due, he’s also going to cost a whopping $26 million-plus on the team’s salary cap if he’s still around.

Given that the team has already labeled Trey Lance as their starting quarterback and that Garoppolo has pretty much burned every bridge by failing to communicate responsibly with the organization or teammates and opting for shoulder surgery, it makes zero sense for the 49ers to do anything else but release Garoppolo when the time comes to set 27 total players free to move from 80 to 53.

But back to Shanahan’s quote. Earlier this week, he stated his supposed uncertain posture with three phrases: 1.) “I don’t know what I’ll do that day,” which was followed by 2.) “(I’ll) probably decide when it comes” and then 3.) “I think any scenario is possible”. Together, Shanahan wants us to believe that no decision has been made to date and that he’ll decide on the fly at the deadline, a point at which anything and everything is on the table. Yea, that sounds wise.

The only thing that keeps Shanahan remotely respectable here in the midst of such sound bites is that NFL history has proven that at least a handful of franchises are under the control of completely inept leaders at any given time. That’s true of general managers, head coaches, and even owners—or maybe especially the owners. Through that lens, maybe Shanahan isn’t so foolish to float such smokescreens after all. All he needs is one disconnected idiot to take him at his word and panic in response with a trade offer.

It’s possible that an unforeseen injury creeps up with the last week of the preseason upon us and Garoppolo is moved to a team in need just like the 49ers wanted to happen all along. But if the deadline creeps too close, don’t believe anything you read or hear from Shanahan unless it’s the admission that Garoppolo has had one foot out the door for quite some time.